Two girls, Nikki and Jeanique.

Both born in 1985 and living in Alkmaar, the Netherlands. We met in 2003, lost contact, then reunited in 2009.

Depression has prevented both from living full working lives.

Two entirely different girls with one thing in common: the need to vent their emotions through creativity; Nikki through her drawings and paintings, and Jeanique using her camera to make self-portraits.

In 2011 we decided to join forces and start a new project together.

Black and Forth is about us, our hopes and fears, our dreams and our dark days. It is about mood swings, emotional roller coaster rides, highs, lows, quicksand and unicorns.

Black and Forth is about sharing with the world what most people keep to themselves.

Most importantly, it is about transforming our emotions into something positive, using them to create something to keep us occupied and produce something to be proud of.

This will be a 52-week project. Each week, one of us will come up with a theme. Then both of us will - each separately - create something within this theme; that way it will be a surprise to each of us what the other person ends up doing with the theme.

Our website will be updated every week to display our latest work and reveal the theme for the following week.

To read the stories behind each work and view behind-the-scenes material check our blog.

Contact us at go@blackandforth.com

See our other work at www.ilovejeanique.com and www.nikkivanoostende.com

Follow us on Twitter via @blackandforth




Jeanique Kats www.ilovejeanique.com (1985) is a self-taught photographer from the Netherlands. She studied multi-media design and focussed mostly on film during her education. After graduating she started an education to become a dramatherapist. But had a burn-out soon after she started this study. After a year of doing nothing but laying in bed she decided to start a 365 days project in which she took a photo of herself everyday, for over a year, and shared this on her flickrpage. She'd never photographed before, but learned during the project just by doing. Soon after she started this project she realized that she could use her self-portraits as a kind of therapy, but more important for her was sharing her story with the world. She wrote about her depression, about her form of autism, about the things she feared and loved. The combination of using herself as a model and combine the photographs with words worked and at the end of the project she had between 1500 and 3000 visitors each day.
She's been published in Holland for several times and decided to do another self-portrait project after her 365 days, a 52 weeks project.




Nikki van Oostende www.nikkivanoostende.com (1985) started drawing ever since she could hold a pencil. Unfortunately for her parents whom weren't so pleased with her drawings on their walls. Studied Graphic Design at Amsterdam. Age 22 she was accepted at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. However she dropped out her first year during an episode of depression. Suffering from extreme highs and lows in moods, she often uses art as a an outlet during heavy emotional crises. At the end of 2010 she started a series of portraits drawn with pastel pencils on brown paper. Each drawing was made during an emotional crisis to prevent from self destruction. Before March 2011 she never shared her personal work with the world before. It was only then she started a Tumblr blog, showing her drawings to the public. This resulted in an exhibition at Podium Victorie, Alkmaar in September 2011 along with the launch of her personal domain www.nikkivanoostende.com. September 1 2011 she started a 365 days art project at her Flickr page. She uploads a new piece of work everyday a year.